


Just One Bite

by Princip1914



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Divinity Kink, M/M, Other, Strength Kink, Strong Aziraphale (Good Omens), Temptation, The Arrangement (Good Omens), What Is Gender?, but with a bit of a twist, extended apple metaphors, temptation kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24549172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: Aziraphale was struck dumb and also struck with the first stirings of Something Else, heavy and warm in the pit of his mortal stomach. “It shouldn’t be possible,” he murmured.“I know you don’t want to believe it.” Behind her dark glasses, Crowley looked both sad and kind. “We’re not so different, you and I. You could do a temptation, too, if you wanted.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 182





	Just One Bite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaffeineChic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeineChic/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for CaffeineChic, who is such a lovely and encouraging fandom presence. CaffeineChic’s detailed and generous comments are always a huge highlight of my day, both when I see them on my own fic and when I see them on others’ fics. We are so lucky to have you around CaffeineChic! <3
> 
> CaffeineChic asked for: genderfluid anyone, but Crowley in particular, divinity / strength / temptation kink. It was harder than expected to get all that into one fic (this fic was supposed to be 640 words but uh...it got longer). I hope I delivered at least some of what you wanted!

“--no difference, it’s all the same thing really,” Crowley was saying. 

“That can’t be true,” Aziraphale insisted. It was an old argument, well worn like the stone steps rising up the hill from the plaza, smoothed by centuries upon centuries of passage. 

“It is,” Crowley said. “I’ll show you.” 

Later, Aziraphale would remember this moment as the beginning of many things. The true beginning of The Arrangement--although it would still be another half century before they went through the tedious business of negotiating terms. The beginning of Something Else too. Crowley reclined in her chair, a long shadow cast by the Tuscan sun. Even in the split second before she moved her hand to call down the power of Grace from Above, Aziraphale felt a tightening in his breast, the first half-conscious recognition that Crowley was beautiful, had always been beautiful, in all of their forms, even that first day in the garden and ever afterwards. 

Crowley’s long fingers twisted gracefully and suddenly the tree in the center of the courtyard burst into bloom months ahead of season. The frisson of the miracle left an aftertaste on the breeze, sweet and holy, with just the slightest bite of sin at the end; the tree was, after all, an apple. Crowley’s hand moved again and the blossoms turned to fruit, heavy on the bough. 

Aziraphale was struck dumb and also struck with the first stirings of the Something Else, heavy and warm in the pit of his mortal stomach. “It shouldn’t be possible,” he murmured. 

“I know you don’t want to believe it.” Behind her dark glasses, Crowley looked both sad and kind. “We’re not so different, you and I. You could do a temptation, too, if you wanted.”

With numb fingers that he barely recognized as his own, Aziraphale reached out, plucked one apple, smooth and ripe, from the branch. He chased the feeling he always associated with Crowley, something sweet, intense, and verdant, like the scent of a bonfire in the woods on a summer night. It swirled around him, rose like smoke on the air. He pulled it up from the ground, poured it into the apple in the palm of his hand, felt the fruit go heavy with implication and suggestion. He held it out to Crowley whose mouth was hanging open, cheeks two bright spots of red. 

“Would you like to take a bite?” Aziraphale asked. 

Crowley opened and closed her mouth several times. “Better--Better not I think.” 

The fog of temptation was still all around them, rising up like mist from the earth. “Just one bite wouldn’t hurt, would it?” Aziraphale asked, teasing. 

“No,” Crowley said, suddenly serious. “I really think it would.” She snapped her fingers. All at once, it was all gone--the air felt thinner. The apple tree was bare again. The bright thread of the miracle and the smokey taste of sin had both dissipated, as if on a strong breeze. Aziraphale was instantly ashamed. 

“I’m so sorry I--” 

“Angel, it’s fine.” Crowley’s cheeks were still bright red. That had not changed. Aziraphale found it oddly grounding. “Now, shall we go for lunch?” 

* 

They didn’t speak of it again, not even fifty years later when they shook hands in a sodden field to solidify an unusual arrangement. Aziraphale never again saw Crowley perform a miracle, Crowley went out of the way, it seemed, to avoid watching Aziraphale perform temptations. Nevertheless, Aziraphale thought often of that afternoon in Tuscany, the sun lighting up Crowley’s red hair. In attic bedrooms across Europe, in low slung houses in the Americas, in a thatched-roof hut in New Zealand, Aziraphale recalled the taste of Crowley’s miracle blooming on his tongue.

It did not matter what kind of Something Else Aziraphale made between his thighs, it always quivered to the memory and cried out for touch. In his moments of weakness, Aziraphale thought of the temptation he himself had called up, rising around them like a dream, allowed, as always, the image of an imagined past--Crowley’s thin fingers closing around the apple, her sharp white teeth biting into its juicy flesh--to push him over the edge. 

*

Later, much later, after the world had and had not ended, after a dinner at the Ritz and a sedate stroll back to the bookshop, Aziraphale was once again brought up short by the memory of that afternoon. 

“We’re not so different, you and I,” Aziraphale muttered, stopping suddenly on the pavement in the sun. 

“What?” Crowley asked, stopping too. The sunlight fell through the trees lighting his red hair like a halo.

“I had to take a bath in Hell to believe it. But you knew, that afternoon in Italy.” 

“I suspected for centuries.” Improbably, Crowley blushed. “I _knew_ when I nearly succumbed to your temptation.” 

“I always wished--” Aziraphale whispered, swallowed. “I always wished you had taken the apple.” 

“Angel,” Crowley breathed, “ _the apple_ was never the temptation.” 

They stared at each other on the sun dappled pavement. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Bookshop?” he asked, but Crowley was already snapping his fingers, they were already there, just inside the door. The Something Else roared to life. Aziraphale’s hands were on Crowley lifting him, carrying him bodily up the eleven creaking steps to the flat upstairs. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, belatedly flustered. “I just remembered, there’s no bed.” 

“I’ll fix that,” Crowley hissed from his position, legs twined around Aziraphale’s thighs, arms tight around his shoulders. There was the flash of a heavenly miracle, the scent of ozone and the clear, bright note of something truly divine--Love, distilled and undiluted. Aziraphale pressed his nose into Crowley’s neck and moaned. 

“Go on then,” Crowley said, breathless, into Aziraphale’s hair. 

Aziraphale deposited his longtime enemy, sometime friend, and soon, hopefully, lover on the bed that had obligingly appeared at the top of the stairs. Crowley stared up at him, limbs akimbo, cheeks as red as a miraculously grown and sinfully ripe Tuscan apple. 

“I’m afraid I’m dreadfully late in offering, but...” Aziraphale bent over Crowley drawing up just a touch of that heady, earthy magic and pouring it delicately into a whisper against his ear “...still want a bite?”

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been in writing in the GO fandom for a whole year (how did that happen!) and as part of a project of giving back, I’m trying to do a set of gift fics for some of the people who have made this fandom such a wonderful place to be a writer. This is the first of several, stay tuned! 
> 
> [Come stop by on tumblr](https://princip1914.tumblr.com)


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